Within Excel, ranges ignore blank cells in computation, but a reference to a blank cell returns 0. The idea being that if you specify a cell in a computation, y

Within Excel, ranges ignore blank cells in computation, but a reference to a blank cell returns 0. The idea being that if you specify a cell in a computation, you're expecting something to be there, whereas when you have a range, you may have sparse data throughout that range, and therefore, the result shouldn't break. SQL behaves similarly. See: http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!15/37025/5 http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!15/37025/5